Publisher's Weekly Review
The rich get richer, through no fault-or virtue-of their own, according to this sweeping study of wealth in the modern world. Economist Piketty's formula "r > g" expresses the simple but profound insight that because the returns on capital-interest on savings, stock dividends and appreciation, rent from a farm or apartment building-usually exceed the economy's growth rate, wealth (especially inherited wealth) tends to grow faster than wages and become more concentrated at the top of the income scale, and the economy increasingly caters to rich elites instead of ordinary workers. (The best antidote to this inexorable tendency, he argues, is a direct progressive tax on wealth.) Piketty makes his case with three centuries' worth of economic data from around the world organized in a trove of detailed but lucid tables and graphs. This is a serious, meaty economic treatise, but Piketty's prose (in Goldhammer's deft translation) is wonderfully readable and engaging, and illuminates the human reality behind the econometric stats-especially in his explorations of the role of capital in the novels of Jane Austen and Balzac. Full of insights but free of dogma, this is a seminal examination of how entrenched wealth and intractable inequality continue to shape the economy. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
If you listen to many modern economists, you get the feeling they think that our global financial system can be explained by pristine numbers: math equals money and vice versa. Piketty, a French economist, isn't satisfied with how many angelic equations can be balanced on a transactional pin. He, along with his fellow researchers, burrowed into the deep loam of European family inheritances, financial records, and other reports accumulated over the course of many decades. Using this historical approach, Piketty argues that the economic divide between haves and have-nots is increasing at a potentially calamitous rate, and he offers constructive solutions for this global state of affairs. Narrator L.J. Ganser is a solid match with the material, authoritative without being overbearing. VERDICT Recommended for most libraries, as the print version has been a surprise hit.-Kelly Sinclair, Temple P.L., TX (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.